On culinary temptations and CEE competitiveness

An editorial article by Zoltan Buzady, Associate Professor at Corvinus Business School, Hungary, & Director of our ‘Leadership & Flow Global Research Network’ in BBJ – The Budapest Business Journal on ‘Budapest Christmas Fair – Sausages – Competitiveness & CEE Business Cultures’:

#cross-cultural-management #leadership #diversity#goodmanagement

I feel privileged to live in beautiful Budapest: every day I walk to work across Vörösmarty tér, where the city’s largest and internationally renowned Christmas market is now on show. On my way, I feel tempted by the many culinary options and the luring smell of mulled wine and fried sausages.

This culinary and cultural diversity is what attracts so many visitors from year to year. Diversity creates competitiveness. The strength of variety is not only the secret of the Christmas fair, but it is also the reason why – over the past decades – so many foreign companies have started to do business in Hungary and the region. After the initial start-up difficulties, they have realized that national-cultural differences across the CEE region strongly influence their businesses.

But do these cultural diversity elements still exist today? In what ways are Hungarians, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Romanians and Bulgarians different in their business practices?

Together with TARGET, a leading headhunting firm and GfK, a leading market research company, I have asked 60 such questions in a recent survey. We analysed the answers of 1,100 expatriate managers in six CEE countries about their experiences in working with local management. (continue to read here)

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